Sunday, January 10, 2010

The problem with BBW.

I guess I'm a BBW? I'm never sure if I really count. I'm pretty fat, but if I Google "BBW" they're all way bigger than me. (Except for the depressing few who are tagged "BBW" and are, like, 135.) More importantly, they're not really shaped like me. It seems like a lot of the appeal is "they may be fat, but hey, big ol' titties," and I don't work that way. My titties are extremely moderate in scope. And my ass, although not precisely small, fails to provide the desirable "bubble" effect as it isn't really round and it's not much wider than my waist. My fat is mostly belly. I'm like 38-38-38.

So even though it's relegated to the ghetto of shameful fetish interest to begin with, I don't find much solace in the BBW label. It's not acceptance of fat chicks, it's just another, larger beauty standard. I can't measure up to 40DDDs and big shakin' booties any more than I can measure up to 32Ds and lithe little waists. I'm a third creature entirely.

(It sucks buying clothes too. Tops that are cut to gracefully cover a belly are always also cut to display ginormous boobs that I don't have. All those square-neckline "peasant" tops would be great if they didn't display a giant square of flat ribcage on me.)

Then again, I can't ask society to create the Holly Pervocracy Beauty Standard in which short big-bellied B-cup girls with weightlifter biceps and frizzy red hair are the most sexiest thing ever. There's not enough girls like me, and anyway, where would that leave girls with frizzy blonde hair? You can't make the beauty standard cover everyone or it stops being a standard.

So I'd rather raise the question, why do we need a standard anyway? It's hardly fair to demand a breed standard in the shows when the breeding is random. More importantly, though no group has ever held my type up as a paragon, plenty of individuals have been quite enthusiastic about it. There may not be Holly-type porn sites, but I know a few guys who liked my naked pictures just fine.

Individual preference isn't the only problem with standards. The other problem is that it's really unhealthy to create the idea of the perfect mate in your head and then try to find humans who match. I didn't know that short blond men were sexy to me until I met Tommy. In fact I still don't know that they are--I just know that Tommy is, and I think a tall dark Tommy would appeal to me more than a short blond random guy. We don't live in a world of types but people.

So "standards" suck, but that doesn't mean everyone has to find everyone equally attractive. That's silly and it's not going to happen. Plus it leads to creepers going "you can't find me unattractive, that's discrimination!" This also doesn't mean that "everyone's got someone"; the vast majority of people do but I can't make you promises. What it really means is that sexiness is the chemistry between individuals. "Society" isn't going to date me no matter how thin and busty I am; the intersection of one person's unique appearance and one person's unique and malleable preferences is all that matters.

32 comments:

So I'd rather raise the question, why do we need a standard anyway?Who says we do? Most people don't try to apply that sort of label to themselves -- I'm struggling to think of any that apply to straight men -- and those that do know that there's a group that fetishizes them (e.g., bears). The world seems to get by just fine without breed labels for the majority of people.

The problem with this whole feminist polemic over beauty standards is that they seem to be based on the idea that such standards are in some way fully controllable, and that if you just have the right politics, you'll in some way alter your desires to a more politically correct beauty standard. And I find this idea to be seriously foolish. There's a great deal of evidence that many beauty standards exist cross-culturally (eg, ideal waist/hip ratio, youthfulness, facial symmetry, and a number of other things) and are, in all likelihood, the product of many eons of natural and sexual selection. Furthermore, even those aspects of beauty that to clearly vary between historical eras and cultures (such as idealized body mass index, particular hair and bodily grooming styles, etc), are deeply internalized early in sexual learning and are unlikely to change during adult life, and hence might as well be hard-wired.

So what does one do with that? Maybe in some ultimate sense we don't "need" beauty standards, but exist and I don't think they're going anywhere. So, yeah, you can rail until you're blue in the face against people who are looking for an a priori standard of beauty, but people have them, and I don't see how shaming people or calling them "unhealthy" for having internalized beauty standards or taking real *pleasure* in the beauty of another is ultimately helpful. (And I realize you're not ultimately trying to shame people here, but far too many feminist anti-beauty polemics do *exactly* that and like so much other feminist sexual moralism, ultimately ends up being both hateful and pointless.)

Bruno - The point I was trying to sort of meander to was the idea of objective beauty as the breed standard for everyone, no matter how poorly they fit it. And how alternative standards like "BBW hot" and "geek hot" are just another kind of objective beauty that still leaves some people out.

Every time I talk about "what society thinks" it's sort of a fuzzy area, because I know a lot of people already don't agree with "society," but I think that the media plus a large number of people would agree with the idea of objective beauty whether it matches their personal preferences or not. That's what I'm arguing against, I guess.

I'm well aware that personal preferences, with or without Teh Ebil Media, tend to cluster somewhat. But that doesn't mean they're universal, it doesn't mean they're objective. It's okay to like skinny blonde busty chicks; it's not okay to think that they're "better" in some fundamental subatomic way.

And much more importantly to me, it's not okay to think that you're "worse" in some objective way because you aren't skinny/blonde/busty/etc. Maybe politics can't change who you like, but it can change what you think of yourself.

Finally, "it'll never change, get used to it" is no argument against anything as deeply cultural as this. Lotta things been true about men and women the last ten thousand years that aren't in the last hundred.

I think that the media plus a large number of people would agree with the idea of objective beauty whether it matches their personal preferences or not.I disagree. Everyone knows that aesthetics differ. Record executives know that few people with my demographics will buy a Lady GaGa album, but she sounds and looks enough like her successful predecessors that they were willing to bet that enough other people would buy the album to make it worth producing and promoting. To the extent we get breed standards, they're a similar product of what's expected to sell.

Incidentally, this ties into one of my theories on online dating: People who don't fit established archetypes will struggle more to sell themselves.

Bruno - The thing is, though, no one dates Society. I don't have to reach a demographic or sell a million Hollies. I have to please one person. At that point demographics become nigh-irrelevant.

Rrgh. Maybe this post was poorly composed. There's some poorly articulated thoughts and a rather icky undercurrent of "I'M PRETTY DAMMIT." I guess I'll leave it up but bleh. I'll write about blowjobs or something, get it off the top of the blog.

The problem with this whole feminist polemic over beauty standards is that they seem to be based on the idea that such standards are in some way fully controllable, and that if you just have the right politics, you'll in some way alter your desires to a more politically correct beauty standard.

I haven't actually heard this as a part of any "feminist polemic." (Also, "in some way fully controllable"? Weasel words and hyperbole don't mix well.) At most it's been the idea that beauty standards as a social construct are in need of reform, not an individual's idiosyncratic standards. The problem is that the two ideas are separate but often related.

In fact, what I have seen, from feminists and non-feminists alike, is an idea that one's own beauty standards are sacrosanct and immutable, that "we can't control who we like" and therefore should find no significance in it. Feminists tend to bring it up in response to folks who act entitled to people's (typically women's) time, attention, affection, etc. and don't consider "I'm not attracted to you" a valid reason for "denying" this, or in response to the idea that one's worth as a human being is correlated with being as attractive as possible to as many people as possible. Non-feminists... I'm not sure why they bring it up in response to discussions about beauty standards. There's *not*, in my experience, that same demand that particular people should start dating people they don't find attractive (quelle horreur!), but there's either the projection of that demand or just a reaction to feeling called out as shallow.

Personally, I think the case for one's idea of physical attractiveness being set in stone is overrated; I was able to expand my own ideas about what/who I found attractive and it did me a world of good. As a teenager, my sense of "attractive" was really limited to "skinny and conventionally pretty" combined with some idiosyncratic but not all that uncommon preferences for sharp features and pale skin, and as a consequence I spent too much time pining over the homecoming queen and totally ignoring folks who would've been a much better match with me. And really, when it comes to sex, I've never been able to figure out how a lot of characteristics that are marked as "attractive" actually have any direct correlation to one's actual enjoyment. On the other hand, it's not as if I still don't find some people more attractive (both in a purely visual sense and overall) than others - for starters, I still identify as straight.

I suppose it's possible to spin my current preferences as "I had them all along, but was brainwashed by society as to what I was *supposed* to like," but once you go down that road it's hard to say "you changed your preferences from the social norm because that wasn't really what you wanted, but it really *is* out of the question for *me* to be attracted to anyone who's not blonde/skinny/busty." (I suppose I could look at it as "their loss," or in the words of that famed bard "They toss it and leave it / and I pull up quick to retrieve it," except that just as often they're looking for young/skinny/handsome and I ain't that.)

Love the post, Holly. I think this is one of those things that men and women have a distinctly different perspective on, and that might be part of the issue here. Mainstream (re: media) ideas on what's physically attractive in a man seem to me to be somewhat more flexible and more inclusive than mainstream ideas on what's attractive in a woman. And of course, all of this gets programmed into us at such an early age that I think even with the best intentions it's hard to entirely seperate yourself from the media messages. Thus fetishists who prize larger women, but still expect those women to have the same relative proportions as a Barbie. And what's worse-- women who will struggle all their lives with being able to accept their supposed "imperfections", because their ideas on beauty were originally founded on an unattainable standard.

Meh. If type-attraction was primarily set by evolution, I'd expect only a tiny minority to be attracted to women who look like they don't eat regularly. Experimental observations of the mainstream seem not to bear out that expectation.

"Meh. If type-attraction was primarily set by evolution, I'd expect only a tiny minority to be attracted to women who look like they don't eat regularly. Experimental observations of the mainstream seem not to bear out that expectation."

Well, you know, its not an all or nothing thing, as I already mentioned. Its entirely possible that many beauty standards are culturally and historically transient (eg, ideals of body mass show a great deal of variation), whereas others seem to exist cross-culturally and cross-historically.

Those of us who do believe some ideas of beauty have something to do with evolution point out two simple facts: practically all sexually reproducing species are prone to sexual selection and differential attraction to potential mates. There's no reason to believe humans are any exception. Second, all human societies seem to have some idea of beauty, even if some of the details differ.

These facts don't answer the moral question of beauty standards (in other words, they're "ises", not "oughts". But they do affect the question. In other words, if a society without beauty standards were easy to achieve, then demanding this as a moral standard might be plausible, maybe even desirable. If such is difficult or impossible to achieve, that's a different matter.

NO ONE is saying that you have to find everyone on Earth pretty! I feel like you're arguing against that stance, and absolutely no one is taking it.

What jpfbookworm is doing is sharing an honest personal story, one I think a lot of people can relate to, and that is not a polemic.

I find it extremely unlikely that a desire for Megan Fox is hard-coded on the Y chromosome. In another time or place you'd find yourself feeling like you were "hard-coded" for someone completely different. Deepest knee-bent apologies for giving advice, but I think you'll find that sexual preferences can be very malleable and that a great amount of pleasure and personal fulfillment can be gotten by expanding your horizons.

Those of us who do believe some ideas of beauty have something to do with evolution point out two simple facts: practically all sexually reproducing species are prone to sexual selection and differential attraction to potential mates. There's no reason to believe humans are any exception. Second, all human societies seem to have some idea of beauty, even if some of the details differ.

Your second point kinda takes the stuffing out of your first. Yes, everyone will be more attracted to some partners than others--duh. But this isn't consistent. Not between societies, not between individuals, and often not between the same individual at different times.

(And yes, again, there are people you don't desire and will never desire, and that's okay. No one here's telling you that you're morally obligated to get a raging schwing for Helen Thomas--or Megan Fox for that matter--if she's not your type. Really.)

Awareness of this inconsistency is a really, really good thing. It keeps you from ruling out partners who don't meet social standards but turn your crank, it keeps you from torturing yourself when you don't meet social standards, and it keeps you from being a dick.

Now as to the second point, I don't think I'm being inconsistent. Keep in mind, I'm not making an "either/or" argument. The fact of cultural variance in some things *does not* eliminate the possibility of cultural universals for others, and I think there actually is evidence for the latter when it comes to certain ideas of beauty. I'm not sold on the idea of radical social constructionism, either concerning ideas about beauty, sexuality, or much else. I'm not a hard-line evolutionary psychologist, either, even though I might come across that way when arguing against radical social constructionism.

I'm actually with you on the idea of people pursuing their own ideas of who they find attractive rather than what they think they should find attractive. (Though I still think that many people with "conventional" tastes are, in fact, simply following their genuine desires, since even if it could all be chalked up to socialization, it runs very deep.) The rub comes if you leave people to their own desires and were to still see, in the aggregate, individuals falling for many of the same "types". Does this mean that there's still evil social constructs that one must be ever more vigilant to root out? This is my problem with the a priori idea that "conventional" beauty standards are all simply negative social constructs.

"Deepest knee-bent apologies for giving advice, but I think you'll find that sexual preferences can be very malleable and that a great amount of pleasure and personal fulfillment can be gotten by expanding your horizons."

And if you really believe that, then what's your opinion on the Christian "ex-gay" movement? Other than the fact that they clearly have a very bad set of motivations, do you really think such people have really stopped being gay and started being hetero because of their deep religious motivation?

Of course, I will acknowledge that you're talking about *expanding* desire rather than restricting it. Still, when I see the word "malleability" in conversations about sexual preferences, it does bring up the specter some very bad ideas in the history of psychology, such as "curing" deviant desires.

*shrug* I usually go for fit/slim girls, prefer tits based on shape rather than size(a firm B cup is more appealing to me than a wobbly D), and I've still ended up falling head over heels for a BBW once(unrequited). Let's face it, personality counts.

Iamcuriousblue, I think our disagreement comes down to the word "primarily". As with almost all things about humans, our preferences in physical attraction are almost certainly based on both evolution _and_ society. I'm just saying that our present culture's beauty standard, which glorifies women who literally look like they can't find enough food, is a powerful indication that our culture's standards for attractiveness are based only in small part on evolution.

And if you really believe that, then what's your opinion on the Christian "ex-gay" movement?

Ya know, when I read Holly's reply, I was planning to respond on just this point, but the other way around: "It's unfortunate that this point has become so politicized..."

The fact is that people really can exert a strong influence on the kind of people they're attracted to, and I strongly suspect that both "exclusives" (strict homo- and heterosexuals) are very frequently based as much on social pressure as on ingrained "hardwiring". Genetic and other physical factors probably make many people more predisposed to one sex or the other on a continuum of "mostly gay" to "mostly straight", but c'mon; we're primates. And primates fuck _everything_. In a sexually reproducing species that also uses sex as a social bonding mechanism, it strikes me as exceedingly unlikely that so many humans would be "wired" to completely exclude the same or (even less likely) the opposite sex. Probably far, far more humans are at least a little bi than are prepared to admit it. I think it's more likely that social factors ("I ain't no fag!" "It isn't some mere choice I can just change!") drive people to claim and to self-reinforce an exclusive attraction that isn't "hardwired" in any meaningful way.

In my opinion, gaiety is more like religion than like race: "yeah, I could probably change it if I really wanted to. But I _don't_ want to, and that's all the reason I need."

iamcuriousblue and elmo_iscariot - I think that which gender you're attracted to is a lot more fundamental than which members of that gender. A lot of people are more bisexual than they admit, but there are also plenty of people who can no more get attracted to men/women than they can to a dog.

"Malleable" means that desire can change somewhat, but not infinitely and not in any direction you want. I'm talking about liking brunettes along with blondes here, not willing yourself into an entirely different sexuality.

Anonymous - Well aren't you a hilarious asshole. I can't deny that some guys feel their "social status" is determined by the "value" of their mate, but generally these are guys with pathetically fragile little egos and no actual accomplishments to get any status from.

do you really think such people have really stopped being gay and started being hetero because of their deep religious motivation?

Of course, I will acknowledge that you're talking about *expanding* desire rather than restricting it. Still, when I see the word "malleability" in conversations about sexual preferences, it does bring up the specter some very bad ideas in the history of psychology, such as "curing" deviant desires.

You still appear to me to be looking at this as a demand that people change their personal standards to fit some political ideal, and that attraction to folks who fit the conventional norm is somehow wrong, but I don't think that's really what we're talking about here. It's more about maximizing individual fulfillment and *not* imposing norms on people. If anything, the ex-gay movement has more in common with the folks who police beauty standards and claim that attraction to anyone other than a consensus "looker" is either fetishism or "settling."

It's more about maximizing individual fulfillment and *not* imposing norms on people. If anything, the ex-gay movement has more in common with the folks who police beauty standards...

You seem to be presupposing that gay people don't have a norm imposed on them, a point I disagree with. It seems clear to me from observation and personal experience that both gay and straight people are under a great deal of social pressure to never appear attracted to any but their One True Sex. That doesn't by itself prove it's all in their heads, but I have a hard time understanding why you and Holly are so adamantly certain that "I just can't get turned on by fat women" is any more or less inherent and immutable than "I just can't get turned on by men".

If exclusive attraction to humans in one weight range is a social construct that an individual benefits from broadening, why can't exclusive attraction to humans with only one kind of genitalia?

[Taking as understood that neither you nor Holly is demanding, cajoling, or even suggesting that anybody change their attraction; we're talking theory here.]

elmo_iscariot - why you and Holly are so adamantly certain that "I just can't get turned on by fat women" is any more or less inherent and immutable than "I just can't get turned on by men"

Well, some people can't. I understand that.

The two scenarios that interest me most here:

1) "I don't get turned on by fat women... except Jane." Most people don't expand their horizons in a purely intellectual vacuum, most do it because of a specific person who's outside their normal standards but has something special about them.

2) "I already know damn well that I get turned on by fat women, but I daren't be seen with one because lol moped." In this case it's a lot like being "ex-gay" because there's no actual change in preferences, just in actions. Someone getting over "moped" assholery isn't changing their personal standards at all, they're just letting go of perceived social standards that never really described them in the first place.

Also, I don't want to make this all about fat; that's my own major insecurity but women who are different-looking in many other ways are in a similar boat.

And the great majority of humans I've known have been either gay or straight... with an "exception list". In the sense of "I don't get turned on by women... But I'd do Emily Autumn."

All's I'm trying to say is that since attraction is so tied up in society, it's very difficult to say that _anything_ is "hardwired" into anybody. And it seems to me that a lot of the objection to looking at homo- or heterosexuality the same way is mostly a reaction to the (justified) feeling of being under siege by homophobes.

It was either you or LabRat who made the point that, while the evidence doesn't seem to support the idea that men are smarter than women, it's within the realm of possibility. So feminists who simply deny the possibility aren't doing themselves any favors. I think the situation is the same for gay folks: making a stand on "this is how God made me and I can't change it" is probably a bad call. Make that stand at "this is the life I want, and I don't _have_ to change it".

If exclusive attraction to humans in one weight range is a social construct that an individual benefits from broadening, why can't exclusive attraction to humans with only one kind of genitalia?

I think you're arguing against something that I, for one, neither said nor believe. Of course one can benefit from not restricting one's self to partners of a single gender, just as one can benefit from not restricting one's self to partners of a single shape, when one's own preferences are not limited this way. Some people are, some aren't. (I may be oversimplifying here, because I'm imagining a situation in which the benefit of a good partner always outweighs the backlash from going against the norm.)

The message here is not that there's something wrong with people who have preferences about who they're more attracted to; *everyone* has preferences. Rather, it's that the more you let outside standards dictate who you're expressing attraction toward, the less opportunity you have to find the people who actually *do* match your own preferences.

Funny thing is, I did not really notice that being a BBW has something to do with having big breasts until you mentioned it. Most of the women I got attracted to and dated were bigger than most and I referred to them as BBW because that's what I figured they are. I actually didn't even bother confirming whether they conformed with the BBW standard. Now that I read your descriptions I realize that some did and some didn't, but I called them all BBW anyway (and as did a lot of other people as I learned over time). Now it seems that the image I get in my head when I think of the word BBW may not be what it "really" represents.

Generally my brain and genitalia get the last word on what is attractive. So if I think they are BBW and the person I am attracted to is alright with the term then I don't think the internet or media have anything to say about it. After all, they cannot feel the pleasant sensation of attraction that I am experiencing in my body.

Now, I have been mostly a princess in a tower most of my life, so I may be lacking the experience to understand all this as much, but are there really a lot of people who take these "standards" seriously and try to restrict their attraction towards it even when their genitalia doesn't cooperate? And do BBW lovers face similar kinds of oppression that queer people have faced?